Going To Mars with NASA director Laurie Leshin | A Bit of Optimism Podcast

So, Laurie, thanks so much for joining.

This is a personal thrill for me.

Oh my goodness.

Because. Because I'm. I've been a space nerd and a NASA nerd my whole life. I went to space camp in Huntsville, Alabama as a 13 year old.

So cool.

And wore my flight suit to school when I got back.

Wow. How did that go over?

I mean, they all made fun of me, but I just think that they were jealous.

Exactly.

And then the first time I got to work with NASA, I remember.

My career is as I know it is happening. And I got a call and they said, would you come and speak to NASA? And my answer was, how much do I have to pay? Whatever it is, the answer is yes.

Yes, of course.

What's. What was. Were you a science or space nerd as a kid also?

I was, I absolutely was. And by the way, as much as a fan of NASA as you are, I'm a fan of you. So it's also for me, I'm a longtime admirer and thrilled to be here.

Long time listener, first time caller.

Yes, exactly. Thank you for having me. Yeah. I grew up in the deserts of Arizona and kind of my very first kind of space memory. I'm a little bit too young for Apollo. A lot of people got inspired to join NASA because of Apollo. For me, it was the first pictures from the surface of Mars, from the Viking landers. And I remember as a 10 year old girl standing in my mother's kitchen in Phoenix, Arizona and seeing those pictures in Time magazine and, and just being totally transfixed and thinking I want to reach out and touch those rocks. And that in fact, has kind of animated my career. It wasn't that I knew right then I wanted to be a space person. And that was it. It was just a huge spark for me of the wonder of new frontiers, of new vistas and of rocks which have continued to animate my career since then.

And it looks you.

And it looks like home. And it looks.

I was going to say it looks exactly like Arizona.

Absolutely looked like home to me. And, and I do think that was a piece of it. Like, I was like, wow, I, I want to be there.

Like my home is on another planet.

I. That's right.

So. Because, you know, at least for a lot of people, you know, me growing up in the space shuttle era, the older generations growing up in the Apollo era, you know, going to space, being an astronaut was the thing.

Yeah.

And then, you know, though we still send people to space.

Sure.

They're not wheeling TVs into the classrooms to watch every launch like they used to.

Correct.

So was so. So your space.

Nerdiness wasn't to be an astronaut.

It really wasn't. I mean, I was really fascinated by. So Viking was the mission in the mid-70s. Voyager was another that flower flew by Jupiter, flew by Saturn. Just absolutely captivating images. It was, for me, it was about sort of other worlds and that. And then, you know, Sally Ride was super inspiring to me. As in high school. I was in high school when she first went up.

First female.

Yes. First American woman.

First American woman.

First American woman was actually the first. Well done, sir. Well done. Thank you. Yes. And I'm fortunate to say Sally became a good friend later in both of our lives. She was amazing. Amazing mentor.

That's amazing.

She was incredible. I miss her a lot.

Okay, so now let's jump forward many, many years.

Yeah.

And we're at JPL now, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is a. It's not really owned by NASA. It's in a partnership with NASA. Is that right?

Yeah. So in fact, our land and buildings are owned by NASA, but our people are employees of Caltech.

Okay.

So one of the world's greatest universities. And that's a long standing relationship. Actually, JPL predates NASA. We started in the 30s doing rocket propulsion and. And actually built and launched America's very first satellite. America's response to Sputnik was built by JPL and launched in 1958, which was before NASA was formed. And the formation of NASA came along about six months later. And JPL then became a part of it.

And Von Braun and all those guys, they were all there.

Yeah, Von Braun was. Was in Alabama, but he was a part of it. It was really a partnership between the Alabama rocket guys and the JPL rocket guys. And there, by the way, were lots of women around then too. The women computer. We're calculating the trajectories of all these rockets.

So. So what is the relationship for those, you know, what is the relationship between NASA's mission, JPL's mission and so, so.

The way NASA operates is it's a government agency and it has government installations. So everybody knows Houston, Johnson Space center, you know, Houston, we have a problem. Or that we launch from Kennedy Space center in Florida. Those are government owned and the employees are government employees. JPL is unique within NASA and that we are in many ways like a NASA center, but we are what's called a federally funded research and development center. We are not directly government employees. So it's a little bit of a both and kind of relationship with NASA.

People who work there think of themselves as NASA folks.

We do. We think of ourselves as part of the NASA family and we're proud that we are a little bit different, that we can maybe do some things a little bit differently. We can lean forward a little bit more on things like innovation and technology and, and the way we're able to partner with the world. And so that's a capability that NASA has taken advantage of over the years.

So let's get into the thick of it now.

Okay.

The question is, is like, is NASA itself, is the NASA mission as popular as it used to be? Because, I mean, are kids dreaming, you know, kids are dreaming of being influencers or kids dreaming of being astronauts and scientists?

Yeah.

And, and, you know, rocket scientists again.

You know, I think they are. I mean, I think. And it's not just because of NASA, but it's also because of the other companies that NASA's partnering with increasingly. Places like SpaceX and Blue Origin. The sort of. There's so much, and you know, we're here in Los Angeles, here in la, so much space activity going on, so many new companies starting, so much private investment happening in space. And we are on the verge of space being opened up in a whole new way to generations of people that otherwise would have had to go through the NASA process and compete against, you know, tens of thousands of people for a slot to fly with NASA. Now the ability is there to fly as a private citizen and.

Or be a pilot or be an engineer.

That's right. Or design and build. And, and so the, the industry itself is growing immensely and it's like our economy is sort of growing beyond our planet to sort of envelop near Earth space, CIS lunar space. So the space between us and the moon. And then ultimately, for people like me who really care about the science, what that means is we get to keep on an even farther out horizon exploring where companies aren't really going to go.

That's such a, That's. But that's, I think that's the $10,000 question, which is, is, does NASA have clarity of what its mission is?

Right.

You know, there was. My understanding was that because NASA is a government agency, it doesn't have a commercial interest, which means it can invest in things that don't necessarily have an immediate commercial.

That's right.

Return on that investment. You can do it for pure science and pure exploration.

That's right.

Which would just have, it would just be too expensive for.

Correct. And not, not, not profitable.

And not profitable. Any, any company wouldn't do it. And NASA did. NASA pioneered getting things to the moon. NASA pioneered, you know, the space shuttle became.

A delivery truck.

You know, it was trying to be.

And, and, and that seems beneath NASA, dare I say it, you know, that, that now that NASA opened up that marketplace.

Right.

And, and, and private sector said, well, hold on, we can actually make a business out of this and we can sell that service to NASA.

Right.

Which ultimately is actually cheaper for NASA.

That's right. We're doing that now.

So the question is, why is NASA, you know, is NASA having a bit of an identity crisis, that it's actually still doing things that are the same as, or competing with private sector? Like why are we going to the moon? We've been there, we've done that in the 60s.

Right.

We don't need to do that anymore.

I think, I think you're really pulling on the right thread, which is NASA has this really interesting role of both enabling an economy, you know, a sustainable economic model behind it.

Right.

And then reaching for the next thing where that model doesn't yet exist, or reaching for the scientific thing, which no one else is going to do, and then moving away and then moving on. Right. Although for, you know, in some cases, you know, in the outer solar system, that's not going to be economically feasible for many generations. And so there's still much more science to do or maybe ever. And so I do think it. For finding that right balance, it's hard. So I think what you're pulling on is that it's hard. I think we've done it with low Earth orbit. We have largely transitioned the, the transport of astronauts and materials to low Earth orbit to the private sector.

Yeah.

NASA is supported that by enabling it and funding it, but not doing it right at the moon. We are working. There's a little bit of the government piece and we're also working with the private sector to quite quickly fill in behind that. So cislunar space is that next. And the lunar surface is that next frontier where NASA is working to do that handoff. And I think we'll see that over our lifetimes because you still hear debates.

On, in Congress, you know, sort of what their, what their funding priorities are.

Right.

And there's the debate of, I mean, far space exploration will always be there. But literally the debate is, do we put all our money in, go to Mars? Do we put all our money in? You know.

Yeah.

You know, colonizing the moon?

Yeah. You know, those, those policy debates are definitely still there.

I guess the thing where I'm struggling with this is why is that a debate at all? I mean Elon is doing a great job of Marsy stuff. I mean he's made it clear he's.

Never been anywhere near Mars. But. Yeah, but he talks about it obsessively but he had. But he talks about it obsessively and.

He'S got a pretty successful rocket program. He's launching way more rockets than NASA ever did.

Absolutely. He's doing, he's doing amazing stuff supporting launch for NASA. And ultimately right now his focus is on getting people to the surface of the moon, which he's actually been supported by NASA to do. I have no doubt that longer term he will be a big part of NASA going to Mars. There are still scientific, there's still scientific exploration of the solar system though that NASA needs to focus on that, that, that Elon won't, that other companies won't. And so for me that's the, that's the thing that we have to work hard to make sure doesn't get lost in these debates about moon versus Mars and things is that there's still incredible discoveries to be made and nobody else is going to do that or at least nobody else in the US is going to do it. Other countries might come in and do it if we don't. And so for us the opportunity is really about making sure we stay on the scientific and technology frontier in those places that no one else is going to go.

I guess that's where I'm sort of.

So Congress will fund. Let's be honest, Congress will fund what's popular.

It will fund things that benefit their constituents.

And if the American public demanded that love NASA, then there would be. Then questions of funding wouldn't be an issue. But NASA has lost a lot of funding. Which has affected you dramatically.

Yeah.

I mean for the first time ever, I think. Right.

I mean.

Or at least in a long time.

No, in a long time. First time. In a long time.

First time in a long time. JPL had. Had layoffs.

We did. We just.

Which is devastating.

Devastating.

And you know, these are people who are all able to get jobs in private sector from all the space agencies but didn't. Because they had a loyalty to NASA.

Yeah.

And probably got paid less than they could have in the private sector. But they had a loyalty to NASA and now they'll go get jobs somewhere else. I'm not too worried about it. But the odds of them coming back are probably slim.

I think that people, you know, and this is where your work is so incredible like the mission of an organization is such a huge draw. Right. A place like jpl, where basically we get paid to build things that nobody else knows how to build because they're incredibly, you know, complex robots that. To go explore other worlds and that we get to make discoveries that are at the forefront of scientific exploration. Like that is hugely compelling to, to a group of folks. There are other people who are really compelled by going to be in an entrepreneurial startup, cool, you know, go a million miles an hour kind of thing, which is great. But yeah, we're really fortunate to have that super compelling mission. And it's, it's really disheartening that, that the funding has not always been there to support it. But it's a broader issue than just NASA support. In this case. We've been caught up in, in what is a federal funding issue. It's not about NASA. It's not about jpl, it's not about NASA. It's not. It's about the full federal budget. Environment is so.

Let'S say uncertain and, and challenging right now. That, that it, it. But the point is that when that happens, it has real human impact here locally.

I mean, this to me is like that. It's one of multiple things, right? Which is, I don't, I think NASA, and this is speaking as a, as a, as somebody who is a supporter and a lover of the organization. So it's not by any means, you know, as a detractor, but NASA seems to have lost its narrative, you know, which is if I ask the average person, you know, why do we have NASA? They can probably give me explore space. And I said, but why does it matter to you? I don't think most people would be able to explain or say back to me. And sure, it was easier during the Cold War. I get it.

Yeah.

It was easier to do the Cold War because it was actually a space race.

Yes.

You know, and it was not only military.

Of military value, but of national pride. And I don't think we see NASA as a. I think this generation doesn't see NASA as a tool of American pride anymore.

In the same way.

In the same way.

I think that's right. And I think it's, you know, as, you know, it's very hard to get any message through these days. It's harder to get people to focus on one thing. There's so many different things going on. It's so much media coming at you and it's, it's a challenging thing to do. But look, I, I think it's, it's hard to disagree. I do think that there's still extraordinary value. We've had more than three dozen countries sign on to go to the moon with us through the Artemis Accords. And, and, and it is still a huge sort of tool of US soft power in the world. We are right now on the space station with the Russians. It's one of the only places in the world that we are still really collaborating with Russia. It is super important to keep those lines of communication open. It's super important. We at JPL right now are building an Earth science mission to look at Earth's surface and how it's changing with India. It's the single largest technological collaboration between our two nations. And it's going to launch from India in a few months time. And it's amazing. We've had 40 engineers over there back and forth, you know, working really closely with their counterparts in India. Huge, huge partnership for our nation. And NASA's at the heart of it. So I think there are many examples. I think those things are pretty easily lost right now in broader conversation.

There's no broader narrative that encapsulates all of that.

Right.

You know, I mean, again, I go back to sort of like Star Trek, which is what, you know, one of the things that exemplifies American, you know, influence and innovation is that though now other nations are coming with us to the moon and other nations are coming with us, and other nations are launching satellites, et cetera, et cetera. It's only American satellites that have gone to the edges.

Correct.

Of the universe.

The edges of the solar system. Beyond our solar system.

Beyond our solar system. And built by jpl. And. And built by jpl.

Sorry, just got to throw that in there.

No, no, no, absolutely. And that to me is, you know.

Whether it's taking people or not, you know, that to me is. And it's. And it goes back to NASA's original charter. Right. Which is. It is a civilian organization pushing boundaries. It is pushing boundaries. Specifically designed that whatever we learn will benefit of all humankind. I mean, that is literally in the charter.

It's pretty. Can't get any better than that.

And why aren't we talking about that? This is for the benefit of humanity.

Yeah. You know, I think, look, I think it's a, it's a really noisy marketplace right now. Right? It's a really noisy marketplace.

Who? Who? Who? So I, I love this concept of a worthy rival and a worthy. Right. I don't, you know, the idea of competition, there's no, there's no winners here.

Right.

It's all about advancing a greater good. But worthy rivals I find fascinating, which is, are other organizations who, their strengths reveal to you your weaknesses.

Yeah.

So somebody who does something so well that you're like, ugh, we could do better.

Right?

Who, who, who are JPL's worthy rivals? Who do you look at and be like, oh, they're so good. And it can be in any capacity. It doesn't have to be scientific.

Well, I mean, look, I think, I think there are other. Well, I think the one right now that is kind of animating a lot of activity at NASA is the commercial space sector. It's the SpaceX of the world. Right. And, and, and I think they're not really our rivals are our collaborators and our partners and we need to be learning as much as we can. So what does, how they operate.

So what does SpaceX do so well that, so you could just collaborate with them and you don't need to worry about it. But what do they do better than you? Or that their strength reveals to you a weakness that you really, you guys can, can learn from them?

I mean, look, I just, I think the, the, the intensity of the focus is really strong. I think the mission is, frankly, and this is something I don't love about lumping the two together. Yeah, the mission is totally different. They are, they are about these right now. They are building amazing launch vehicles and they're doing it better than anyone in human history ever has. Yeah, we don't build launch vehicles. So like in that sense it's, in fact, we leverage their launch vehicles, we launch on their launch vehicles. We love working with them, but it's, there is an intensity for how fast they've grown and how they've really been able to keep their focus during that and how they've just been unwilling to accept the way things have always been done. So to me, like, that's the nugget. It's the question everything piece.

Yes.

And as a mature organization, we're literally 86 years old at JPL.

You're still a government organization.

We still have a lot of baggage. That's right. We have a lot of the bureaucracy there. And so the whole, like, why can't we, why have we always done it this way and why can't we do it better? And to show that you can take risks smartly and learn from them Again, there are things about working in the government that the amount of oversight that we have is just, it's very different environment. But even within that, where can we Carve out those places. And in fact we have, I mean, things like the Ingenuity helicopter, the great little helicopter on Mars was sort of done in spite of the system. Right. And so when we find those little places where we can really push on things, figuring out how do we leverage and scale, that is something that I'm excited to be working on at jpl.

How are ideas evaluated? Like, and what I mean by this is like, you know, I just know from business, you know, when we're innovating, you know, we put a bunch of hair brain ideas on the table and there's, you know, whether it's a good system or a bad system, ideas get evaluated and something gets invested in.

Right.

I mean, how do you choose which harebrained idea to spend billions of dollars on?

So I don't get to spend billions of dollars usually, but. So you definitely spend millions. Yes. So for the really big things like the Europa Clipper spacecraft that's being tested at JPL right now, which will go out to the Jupiter system and look for, you know, whether this ocean on one of Jupiter's moons is habitable. That's, that's a multibillion dollar mission. It is. Those decisions are made by a broad scientific community that come together once a decade through the National Academies here in the US and come up with a list of ranked priorities of science missions to go do. And so that's, so that's the big ones. So the little ones, what you're asking about is like, how do we do.

Internal versus a some sort of jet?

So we, we do have, we're fortunate to have the ability to make internal investments at JPL and to bring technologies forward. And we sort of do it as a fly off at multiple levels. Right. You start with lots of seedlings, lots of little things. From those, we pick a few bigger things to try and pursue and we see how far they can get. And then if there's something that really looks favorable, we work with NASA to try to get a place for it to be flown. So we build rovers and we now build helicopters and there's rovers and roamers of all sizes and shapes that we have tested over time. We have a, we have test facilities, one that looks like Mars, one that has ice, where we can try out these different ways. And we do a fly off. We basically test out and decide which one looks most promising and then we take it a bit further and see how it goes. Our job, really part of our job is to bring things to a point where we can really confidently say to the science community in one of these once a decade, they're called decadal surveys. Say hey, we have this technology, you have these science goals. Here's how we think they come together in a mission concept. What do you think? And so it takes many years. I call these big missions are the modern cathedrals. They are generational quests that we go on. It takes sometimes 10, 20 years to get to the point of someone saying great, let's fly that. And then it takes another five to 10 years to build it. And when you're going to Jupiter, it takes six or seven years to get there. So these are really long, long arc of, of innovation.

Can you tell me something specific that JPL has done, where the idea came from, someone more junior that nobody expected?

Oh, almost everything we do is like.

Give me one, give me one.

I mean, you know the, the, the sampling system on Mars that. Well actually I managed to go back to the, the helicopter itself. Ingenuity was built by a group of kids, what you and I would look at and call kids, youngsters who were. We sort of took off the constraints of, I mean when, when you get the constraints only from physics, right? Which is you are trying to fly in an atmosphere that is 1/100th the density of Earth's. That's the density of Earth's atmosphere at a hundred thousand feet. And helicopters on Earth only fly to like 20,000ft. That means you have to weigh nothing. So the Ingenuity weighed four pounds. Like it's the lightest little thing you've ever seen. And so you can't fly a flight computer that already has been, that has been space qualified. You have to fly something from a cell phone. Well, that's not allowed. Really. Why not? Well, let's try it. And so like how do you figure out how you create spaces to give teams permission to fail, give them permission to do something.

So you took a cell phone and tried it out in space conditions.

Yeah. And it totally worked.

As opposed to saying oh, it's not space qualified.

You can't fly, can't do it.

So saying no before.

You've tested it saying no before. So again trying to create places where we can really just try things.

So it's questioning the no. Like that won't work. Well, yeah. Do we think we do we know we know that.

Like yeah, right. Or is it. And, and again you don't, you don't question it on a multi billion dollar spacecraft. You question it on something that costs less and you, and you do those things. And again that team, it was, you know, 50, 100 people. It wasn't, it wasn't a thousand people working on the little helicopter. Right. And most of them were fresh outs or recent hires. Like a lot of them were quite junior.

That's super inspiring. Right? To be fresh out of grad school or fresh out.

Yeah, exactly.

And give the opportunity to invent.

Invent a Mars helicopter.

A Mars helicopter. As opposed to serve the, the genius and one day I'll get to invent something.

Exactly. And look those. And what we have at JPL is a mix of those kind of smaller, faster projects with some of the larger sort of a bit more bureaucratic things that are probably too big to fail kind of things. Right. And so to me, the interesting thing is how you make a culture that can handle both and can succeed with both. And I think it's challenging.

That's such an interesting thought. Right. Which is these things that are too big to fail. But the problem is, the problem with science.

Yeah. Is there's just one. No.

Yeah, yeah. Right.

But there are many good things. The pro.

The problem with science and the problem with innovation is that failure is part of, is a part of it.

It's. It's required.

And the number of times that Apollo test facilities, test test beds, crashed. Oh yeah, unfortunately sometimes with people on board.

Yeah.

But you know, before we got it right. Or the number of times even in private sector that you know, they crashed before they got it right. Like there's no such thing as no risk.

Absolutely.

You can only mitigate it at best. But at the end of the day, right. And I've seen this again, I've seen this in DOD and I assume it's the same at NASA, which is they become so risk averse.

Right.

Where they're literally not letting test pilots who understand the risks and have actually signed up for the risk fly things because they're afraid it might not work in, in flight and so that even the test pilots are like, let me fly the thing.

Find out, I will tell you.

You know, and so like has, in its old age, has NASA become more to, to, to risk average?

Yeah, I think we have. I mean, again, and you know, probably get fired for saying it. No, I'm kidding. Yeah, I mean, I think it's, it's one of the big challenges is getting that balance right within NASA as a whole. We try and really do it at jpl, but again, sometimes it's, it's. We're sort of almost fighting against the system that we work within. Right. And you know, we, we proceeded astronauts to the moon. At jpl, we flew the robotic missions that were the precursors to the moon. The first six of them either missed the moon entirely. I mean, blew up on the launch pad, missed the moon entirely, didn't work. I mean like so literally we have this tradition and I think you, if you visited jpl, you might have seen it with the peanuts in the mission control because on the seventh try, it worked. And the only think of as, well, the guy was eating peanuts at the mission control station. So that's our good luck charm. Still to this day, 60 years later. And, and back then it was, yeah, we, oops, we missed the moon. Sorry, what happened.

But even, even your joke, like I'm going to get fired for saying this, means it is a sensitive topic.

It is.

And so what happened, what happened culturally at NASA where a very high risk tolerance organization became a lower risk, dare I say low risk tolerance.

So there was a time in the, in the 90s even where we were working on a much. Trying to sort of embrace a more of a model of, more like we did in the early NASA, fly a bunch, they're not all going to work. And guess what? A couple of them failed and everybody lost their minds. And that's, that's when it really changed is that, well, these are taxpayer dollars. You can't fail. And so it's, it was less about NASA itself and more about the system that NASA operates within.

Okay, so this. All right.

And we also lost lives, by the way, on Challenger and Columbia. And that also is huge. Right. So it's a different thing when there are people on board. I get the risk aversion, but Gus.

Grissom and that crew lost their lives too.

Absolutely.

And the, it incentivized people to try harder.

That's right.

I mean everybody who straps onto a flying bomb. And that's what the space shuttle was, and that's what the Apollo rocket was.

It's a, it's a flying explosion.

It's a flying explosion with the ingredients of a hydrogen bomb as your fuel cell. You know, like there are risks. Now what we want to avoid is negligence, obviously. And gross negligence is unacceptable.

Totally.

But at the end of the day, these are highly dangerous missions.

Absolutely.

And all the astronauts know that.

Sign up for that.

Yeah, that's part of the game. And so what is it about? And their families didn't demand that we stop the missions, you know, and their colleagues didn't demand that they stop the missions. So I'm so curious about what it's what's happened to America that we, that our politics, our politicians will reflect us, hopefully. Well, not always these days. Yeah, I don't think they do, but.

No, but I think you're. I think that's a fair point.

Like where did we lose our moxie?

Right.

You know.

Yeah, I think it's a great question. And look, I think there are things that we can do in a sort of smaller, cheaper model and I think NASA is working towards that. And again, that also helps bring in the private sector. If you look at intuitive machines which currently.

Almost landed successfully on the moon. It landed successfully. It landed.

It didn't land upright.

It didn't land upright. And it's not working exactly the way they'd hoped. But it's their first try. But I mean, again, I think that's a great.

They got there on their first try.

And that is NASA supported. They would not be doing that mission without NASA. But when you're trying to do. And so this is, it's a slight difference, right. That I try and sort of a thread I try and pull on is at jpl, we are very interested in Mars and beyond. Right. Those deep space exploration things where there is not this ability to go, you know, every few months you can just turn around and do it again. Like it takes six years to get to Jupiter. Right.

You have to wait six years to find out if you failed.

Right. Right. So it does. It's not amenable to the Elon Musk. Launch it, blow it up. If it blows up, you'll launch it again in a few months or.

But NASA is getting better at making smaller, cheaper things.

You bet. You bet.

Which allows us, like, which allows that.

But again, it's still for deep space exploration. You know.

Isaac Newton is still in the driver's seat and there you still have to sort of get there. And so it's not as amenable to try and fail and try and fail.

So let me run a theory by you.

Sure.

Can I be contrarian just for fun?

What have you been so far?

Fair. Okay. Can I be contrarian for more fun? The obsession with putting a person on Mars, I don't understand it.

I think people think it's. It's going to be an easier place to live than the moon in many ways. Longer term, it's got water, it's got an atmosphere that it's got, it's, it's got days and nights that are Earth. Like, it's got temperatures that are more manageable. Like there's many things about it that are actually somewhat easier. It's further away, which makes it harder.

Right.

But, but long term, the idea is not just about flags and footprints. Right. I think it's about really setting up other places for human civilization to be in the long haul. And by the way, Mars, I mean, we've literally, we've been there, we've landed. We, JPL have landed there successfully seven times in the last 25 years.

Isn't that amazing that we've been to Mars seven times?

We've been to Mars more than that, but in the last 25 years. So the two Vikings were before that. But, but in the last 25 years, since Mars Pathfinder, the cute little rover that Matt Damon went and found in the Martian, you know, since then in 1997, we've landed successfully seven times, which is amazing because before that it was like very much a, like, oh, you know, one in three kind of game.

Yeah.

So we have sorted out how to do it. What we've never ever done is come back. We've never even robotically brought anything back. Never done it. And that's our next big mission at jpl is to do that round trip for the very first time. To me, if you can't bring back something the size of a volleyball containing some very valuable rocks, by the way, that will answer questions about life on Mars. How are we going to send people there and back? We've got to. It's time to start taking those next steps. So even as we are sending humans back to the moon, we need to be taking the next steps and thinking forward about humans to Mars.

What is something specific that you've done in your career that if every project went like this one, whether it was successful or not, could have been an abject failure.

Yeah.

But if what's something specific you've done in your career and it doesn't have to be in your current role, that if everything you did was like this one thing, you'd be the happiest person alive. Like something that really stands out.

Gosh, there's a lot of things. But, but, you know, the first time I built and worked with a really large diverse team, I was actually working on a NASA mission idea. In the end, we were not successful. It did not get funded. But we kind of took it all the way to the end. And what we were told is actually we came in the closest possible second, so we didn't win.

But what was, what was the idea?

It was actually the first round trip mission to Mars, believe it or not, the first robotic mission. It Was going to go and fly through the atmosphere and sweep up dust and gas and come back. Not land, not go into orbit. Just fly back, fly by and come back. It was called Skim Skim through the Martian Atmosphere. So this was about a little more than 20 years ago now. I was a young professor and it was my first sort of very deep, not one of my first very deep engagements with JPL actually. And the team that we built and the way that we just kind of getting to see how a big team of really capable people where everybody does the thing they're good at, can be, it was like magic. And we had a big thing kind of at the end of the competition you do what's called a site visit where the review team comes and they, you're with them for eight hours and they're like throwing questions at you and you people scurrying off to back rooms and answering the questions and you're trying to make your case. And, and, and it was just such a special experience seeing what a team can do versus before that I had been sort of a single investigator scientist in my lab doing my thing with, with small number of people and that was great. But seeing what a big team could do, it was super inspiring. And, and even though we didn't win and a lot of people on the team kind of took the not winning really hard. Cause we know we kind of crushed it. But it's like, you know what, we kind of left it all on the field. Like we did our very best and we have a ton of pride in what we did and I can live with that. And so to me again, there's something about that power of great teams that has really animated my whole career from that point forward. Like it was kind of one of the things that really sort of led me to start stepping out of the lab and into leadership. But seeing what that was like.

But you've worked on great teams that have done great things before. What was it about this one that really makes it stand out so much?

It was the most diverse team in terms of types of background, engineers and scientists really working together from lots of different types of organizations and different types of backgrounds. It was the most diverse team I had worked on in that sense. And I would literally.

As opposed to a small group of.

The same kind of scientists who are working on similar scientists. Yeah. Which I also loved by the way. But, but this was like. Because I would wake up in the morning, you know, this was like a couple of year long process of getting to this point of not winning. Woo. Yeah. And, and I would, and I would like, wake up every morning, I'd be like, I'd call up some of the engineers at JPL and I'd say, I thought of this thing and this is the whole reason, like, the mission isn't going to work. And they would say, oh, that's an engineering problem. Let us go work that for a couple days, we'll get back to you. And then they would call me back and say, okay, we figured out this little tweak we can make or this adjustment to the, to, to the design we can do. And, and like, I did this every day, like every week for, for months.

So a rock scientist could call an engineer and say, I've got a problem. They didn't say, well, you don't know what you're doing. They said, ooh, let us go look at that.

Let's look at that. We hadn't thought of that.

Real collaboration.

Real collaboration. And just like knocking down one problem after another until it's done.

Yeah.

And until it's as good as it can be. It's never done. But it, it was inspiring just to know, like, hey, I don't have to figure it all out myself. There's all these other people that can help and they want to help. They're excited about it. They're inspired by the mission, they're inspired by the idea. It was great fun.

Tell me an early, specific, happy childhood memory.

Oh, gosh.

Something I can relive with you.

Yeah.

So I spent a lot of time outdoors as a kid with my dad, would take us camping and such. So probably visiting Grand Canyon.

But do you remember one in particular?

Yeah. So camping in the bottom of Havasupai Falls in the Grand Canyon was, was amazing.

And what, what was it about that memory of all the wonderful things that happened to you when you were a kid? Was it about this one memory about camping and that, that, that is why you want to talk, that you want to talk about it now?

I just, I. Again, this feeling of being immersed in, like, incredible beauty in the outdoors and just being inspired by what was around me and nature.

Yeah, but you'd had that before. You'd been camping before, you'd had all of that before. What was it about this one?

Well, it was just incredibly beautiful. I don't know if you've ever seen Havasupai Falls. It's turquoise blue water, like, incredible place. Just, just incredible. The feeling of being in a magical place.

But you've been in magical places before. This is the One you want to talk about.

Yeah. It was one of the most magical. It was one of the most magical places I've ever been.

When you tell both, you go on.

Yeah, I know, I know. Yeah.

When you tell both those stories, you use the word magical.

Oh, interesting.

You talked about the magic of the team.

Yeah.

And. And that it didn't. Like the commercial. The commercial says the viability of the project. You didn't. You didn't win.

Yeah.

It didn't. Never happened. But you talked about the magic.

Yeah.

And you. I even think you used the word beauty.

Yeah.

Like the, the magic and the beauty of all these different people coming together.

Right.

And. And I think this is the thing that seems to inspire you, which is the pursuit of magic and beauty. Yeah, you know, definitely. And, and what I. And I think what you've learned as a leader is.

Is that you have to create these environments. Like you're. You were taken to the camping, to this place.

Yeah.

And you were sort of left there, you know, like, I mean, I mean, actually, but like your family sort of like made camp here.

Yeah.

Which is much the same as a team being brought together on a project, which is much the same way as pursuing, you know, any of the projects that, that you're passionate for. And I love. I'm going to go back to the snowplow, which is. Magic can't happen.

Yeah.

If you're bogged down in.

That's right.

In, in packing the car.

Yeah.

You know that you're bogged down and like, do we have enough gas? It's like somebody just somebody else figured that out. Let's just get to the magical place where magic can happen.

Right.

And I think that you sort of made a career out of bringing people together for that. Allow magic to happen. Creating environments in which you can cross pollinate so magic can happen and clearing away mess, you know, and, and debris so that the gold nuggets, you know, the magic is there, the glowing shiny things are there.

That's. That's very insightful, actually. Thank you. That's amazing.

And I think that's, you know, that's one of the things I think that I think JPL embodies under your leadership, which is that there is magic in this place.

Yeah.

And, and I think this is the thing that NASA. I want to see the magic return to NASA like in the days of old.

Appreciate the magic.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And magic isn't always safe. Right, Right. I mean, going camping is not always safer.

In a hotel, there's mystery involved.

There's bears.

There's nature which is unpredictable, you know, and you put yourself out there and. And there's competition, right? Like competing egos and communing things. But if you can put all the egos aside, the magic will happen.

Yeah.

If you get rid of all the genius, top down magic will happen. If you are open minded, if you clear the bureaucracy, all of this. By the way, there's no magic to this formula. It's pretty obvious. Get rid of mess and noise and. And the music lies.

Create space. Create space for magic.

Create space for magic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just like yeah. Laurie, I love what you're doing at jpl. I can't wait to come back again and visit because it is a magical place and I'm so glad you came and visited to share some of that magic. Thank you.

I'm thrilled. That was a great conversation.

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